There are times when I wonder why I am so involved with
computers ... this is clearly one of those times.

कर्मण्यैवाधिकरस्ते मा फलेशु कदाचन

karmaNyaivaadhikaraste maa faleshu kadaachana

This is a phrase from the भगवद गीत (bhagavad giit) which has
been stuck in my head for the last 30 odd years. It roughly
paraphrases into

Do something because you think it is worth doing
not because of what you hope to achieve by doing
it.1

The above maxim is a good one but is sometimes a cop-out.
Moreover, it provides no basis for actually making ethical
choices.

Ethics comes from one's interactions with the communities one
is a part of. There are (roughly) two communities that I am a
part of in the context of computers:

the FOSS community; specifically, the Debian
community.

the IMSc computer community

I take these in turn below.

Debian and FOSS
communities

By its own standards, the Debian community has suffered a
massive failure ... and by these same standards it has reacted
extremely well to this failure.

I feel shame and blame. Why have I been ignoring RFH#332498 all these days
when it shows up in the output of wnpp-alert? Here I
am, a mathematician with some understanding of the issues, not
helping out! Three years ago I even gave a short course of
lectures on implementations of crypto; the source of openssl and
openssh were used as examples. Excuses like, "I don't know
anything about library packaging" and "I need more time!" (who
doesn't) seem too weak now.

At the same time, I feel a sense of solidarity with the Debian
(and more widely FOSS) community as it tries to pull out of the
resulting mess. The resilience that allows us to laughwryly at ourselves is IMHO admirable.

As Steve Kemp wrote:
"[When we look back we will see that] we did good".

IMSc computer community

The IMSc computer setup was built by volunteers and
was genuinely a community when I joined this institute in 1996.
It has since then broken into users, system administrators and
the computer committee. As Indira Gandhi would have said: "This
is a world-wide phenomenon", and as was the case when she said
it, my response is: "That doesn't make it a good thing!"

When I speak about this fractured IMSc community below it is
in generalities. There are certainly individuals who rise above
the shards.

I have been promoting the use of FOSS and more specifically
Debian at IMSc ever since I got here. While explaining the
pragmatic aspects like cost and security, I have also tried to
emphasize the freedom and community aspects of FOSS use. When the
latter are not understood or accepted, the former are easily
blown away.

This year I made an attempt to get the Computer Committee to
invite users to choose2 their own computers and
the software that ran on it, but it turned out that no one really
wanted this. Users just wanted to buy "fancy toys", the
administrators just wanted to make their life simple and CC
members just wanted the power to dictate what people
bought.3

I also made an attempt to get our users to educate each other
on the use of computers for their work --- first through the
establishment of a wiki and then through the "No-Excuse" mailing
list.4

Unfortunately, the fractured IMSc computer community sees
computers and software as expensive commodities --- with some
combination of fear, greed and irritation. In any case, there is
no feeling of being part of a larger community that is trying to
solve (certain types of) problems.

A wise man once said:

With great freedom comes even greater responsibility.

This may explain why we prefer being dictated to by
proprietary vendors and computer committees that "buy stuff for
us". We are afraid of the responsibility that comes with
freedom.

Another much quoted quote is:

If you are not part of the solution then you are part of the
problem.

The FOSS community (actively) invites people to
join-in in solving problems. This participation (which can be at
a level of one's own choosing) is the source of one's
freedom in free software. The IMSc community just wants
मा-बाप सर्कार (maa-baap sarkaar) to fix their toys.

A decision

The IMSc computer community was tied to Debian and FOSS after
the break-ins into our system in the early 2000's. At that point,
I was instrumental in installing a security infrastructure based
mainly on Debian. This led to my greater involvement with FOSS
and Debian and also to the greater "infiltration" of Debian and
FOSS into IMSc computers.

From the "commodity" point of view at IMSc we have come a full
circle since most users will have to "do a lot" so that the IMSc
computer LAN emerges unscathed from the crisis created by the
Debian openssl flaw.

From the "community" point of view at Debian we have spiralled
out and even this major whirlpool will not drag us back in.

It is no longer possible (for me) to straddle the circle and
the spiral in an attempt to widen the former; I'm taking the
"outward radial vector"!